Dating should, by all means, be a matter of the heart. This still holds true for who you chose to date, and the location you chose for your first date to happen. If you are a vampire, like Ms. Vampy, the whole ordeal should be rather simple thanks to the mind-manipulating abilities and sheer irresistibility ascribed to her kind. Upon given the chance to plant the fangs deeply into the neck of the desired human, the case is pretty much settled. Us mere mortals, on the other hand, almost need a detailed battle plan and the chump change to pay for it all.

Dating used to be so easy, at least from the male perspective. In ancient times, back when our ancestors still made do with living in a cave, all the romantically inclined young male needed was a well crafted wooden club, well balanced and sturdy. From the female, nothing much was required other than being oblivious to whoever was hiding in the bushes and later recovering speedily from the bump on the head and the headache that goes with it. It is, by the way, not known whether it has ever impressed a female more when the club was made of finely carved exotic wood rather than a domestic branch of, let’s say, oak. You probably don’t ask too many questions about details after you’ve been clobbered over the head and dragged into a cave by your hair.

Later on, it got more complicated than that. While it initially was only a deal between the bride’s father and the groom to be, involving the trade of various numbers of domesticated animals or matters of real estate, it came to pass that eventually the female got a say in the whole matter. And that was, when it got really complicated and males had to be increasingly creative. While courting the female has its undeniable parallels in the animal kingdom, for humans it contains a rather human element: economic considerations. While animals just grow the stuff they need to impress the females, we have to pay for everything. Unless you are a character in a classical play, like Romeo and Juliet, you will have to worry about money – and about who pays for what, even on the first date.

Discouraged by the complexity of all this, the case has been made to go back to good old club-over-the-head method but, for some mysterious reason, this only seems to be finding support among the males. Maybe our 110 year old Ms. Vampy has a solution for all this, although she probably has not much difficulty finding someone to take her out on a date and pay for it… with his money or his mortality.